Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1205 (starts 2/2/12)

Artist: Moby Grape
Title: Omaha
Source: LP: Moby Grape
Writer: Skip Spence
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
As an ill-advised promotional gimmick, Columbia Records released five separate singles concurrently with the first Moby Grape album. Of the five singles, only one, Omaha, actually charted, and it only got to the #86 spot. Meanwhile, the heavy promotion by the label (with the blessing of Moby Grape manager Matthew Katz no doubt) led to Moby Grape getting the reputation of being over-hyped, much to the detriment of the band's career.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Comin' Back To Me
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer: Marty Balin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to this Marty Balin tune. Balin, in his 2003 liner notes to the remastered release of Surrealistic Pillow, claims that Comin' Back To Me was written in one sitting under the influence of some primo stuff given to him by Paul Butterfield. Other players on the recording include Balin and Paul Kantner on guitars, Jack Casady on bass and Grace Slick on recorder.

Artist: Doors
Title: I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
Source: CD: Strange Days
Writer: The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The Doors second LP, Strange Days, was essentially a continuation of the band's first album stylistically, even down to closing the LP with a long extended jam track featuring a Jim Morrison monologue (or poem, if you prefer). Reportedly there were several songs on the album that had already been written by the time the Doors signed a recording contract with Elektra, but had to be left off the first LP due to space limitations. Although the entire band shared songwriting credit on all Doors songs on their first few albums, it's likely that I Can't See Your Face In My Mind, with its highly personal lyrics, was mostly a Morrison composition.

Artist: Who
Title: Man With The Money
Source: CD: A Quick One
Writer: Don and Phil Everly
Label: MCA
Year: 1966
The few cover songs released by the Who were all by R&B artists such as James Brown and Sonny Boy Williamson. One song that would have been an exception was Man With The Money, which was originally an Everly Brothers B side. The Who version of the song, however, was not released until 1993, when it was included as a bonus track on the CD version of A Quick One.

Artist: 13th Floor Elevators
Title: Nobody To Love
Source: CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer: Stacy Sutherland
Label: Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1967
The release of The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators in 1966 is considered by some to be the beginning of the psychedelic era. The band soon left their native Texas to spend four months touring in California, playing to packed houses and influencing countless other musicians. Their label, however, wanted them back in Texas and recording new material, and went as far as to threaten to release older, substandard, recordings of the Elevators if the boys didn't return home immediately. Once the band got back to Texas, however, the label made several missteps, such as forcing the band to play inappropriate venues. Also, due to the band members' notorious drug use, the label was reluctant to promote them heavily. By mid-1967 a rift had developed within the band itself, with two of the five members leaving the group to move to San Francisco. The remaining members, with a new bass player and drummer, went into the studio to record a true piece of acid-rock: the album that would come to be known as Easter Everywhere. Although the bulk of the LP would be written by guitarist/vocalist Roky Erickson and electric jug player Tommy Hall, Nobody To Love was written by the band's lead guitarist, Stacy Sutherland.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Gypsy Eyes
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Among the many ways that Jimi Hendrix was an innovator was in his approach to studio recordings. Whereas previous artists had concentrated on their mono mixes, with the stereo versions often done almost as an afterthought, Hendrix instead saw stereo mixing as fertile ground for creative experimentation. By the time of Electric Ladyland he was doing only stereo mixes; the mono mix heard here is a simple recombining of the two channels rather than a seperate dedicated mix.

Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Reasons For Waiting
Source: CD: Stand Up
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Strictly speaking, Reasons For Waiting is not a Jethro Tull piece. Rather, it is an Ian Anderson solo work with orchestration. This was quite a departure from the first Tull album, which was (like most debut albums) made up of songs already in the group's live performance repertoire (the exception being Mick Abrahams's Move On Along, which in addition to having Abrahams on lead vocals, added a horn section).

Artist: Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title: Cowgirl In The Sand
Source: CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer: Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
It has been said that adverse conditions are conducive to good art. Certainly that truism applies to Neil Young's Cowgirl In The Sand, written while Young was running a 102 degree fever. Almost makes you wish you could be that sick sometime.

Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Dust My Broom
Source: LP: Underground Gold (originally released on LP: Canned Heat)
Writer: Johnson/James
Label: Liberty
Year: 1967
The first Canned Heat album was released shortly after the band's appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and consisted mainly of covers of blues classics. As could be expected of a band made up of record collectors, the songs on the album were as true to the original versions as the members of Canned Heat could make them. Of more interest is the song Dust My Broom itself, which was originally recorded in the 1930s by Robert Johnson, then electrified on Elmore James's 1951 recording. The James version, however, did not give Johnson any songwriting credit, a practice that was fairly common among blues artists at the time. Originally Canned Heat's version, which was based on James's recording, only gave James as the song's writer. Later releases, however, correctly give the credit to both Johnson and James.

Artist: Bob Mosely
Title: Let The Music Play
Source: LP: Bob Mosley
Writer: Bob Mosley
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
The story of bassist Bob Mosely reflects the dark side of rock as much as it does the limelight. After becoming the only Californian member of Jerry Miller's band, the Frantics, Mosely stuck around to become a founding member of Moby Grape, achieving a lot of fame (not all of it positive) in a relatively short amount of time. Mosely, however, had ongoing mental health issues, made worse by the ready availability of several varieties of illegal substances. Following the release of the album Moby Grape '69 Mosely abruptly left the band to join the Marines, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic during basic training. He returned to music the following year, rejoining his former bandmates for the 1971 album 21 Granite Creek before embarking on a solo career in 1972. His debut album as a solo artist included the song Let The Music Play, which features a horn section in addition to the usual rock instrumentation. By the early 1990s Mosely had returned to his native San Diego and was reportedly living on the streets when three of the other members of Moby Grape located him and reformed the band, in part to help Mosely get back on his feet. In Mosely's words: "In 1996, Peter Lewis picked me up along the side of a San Diego freeway where I was living, to tell me a ruling by San Francisco Judge Garcia gave Moby Grape their name back. I was ready to go to work again." Most recently, Mosely released a solo album called True Blue in 2005.


Artist: Barbarians
Title: Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ron and Doug Morris
Label: Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year: 1965
From Boston we have the Barbarians, best known for having a one-handed drummer named Moulty who wore a hook on his other arm (and was probably the inspiration for the hook-handed bass player in the cult film Wild In The Streets a few years later). In addition to Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl, which was their biggest hit, the group recorded an inspirational tune (inspirational in the 80s self-help sense, not the religious one) called Moulty that got some airplay in 1966.

Artist: Leaves
Title: Dr. Stone
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Hey Joe)
Writer: Beck/Pons
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1966
The Leaves were a solid, if not particularly spectacular, example of a late 60s L.A. club band. They had one big hit (Hey Joe), signed a contract with a major label (Capitol), and even appeared in a Hollywood movie (the Cool Ones). This tune, from their first album for Mira Records, is best described as folk-rock with a Bo Diddly beat.

Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Pamela
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer: Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
Trying to take in the entire first Ultimate Spinach album can be a bit overwhelming. Taken individually, however, songs like Pamela, which closes the album, are actually quite listenable.

Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience (pun intended) so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP: The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading it a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.

Artist: Cream
Title: Four Until Late
Source: LP: Fresh Cream
Writer: Robert Johnson
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
By the time Cream was formed, guitarist Eric Clapton had already established himself as one of the best guitarists in the world. He had not, however, done much singing, as the bands he had worked with all had strong vocalists: Keith Relf with the Yardbirds and John Mayall with the Bluesbreakers. With Cream, however, Clapton finally got a chance to do some vocals of his own. Most of these are duets with bassist Jack Bruce, who handled the bulk of Cream's lead vocals. Clapton did get to sing lead on a few Cream songs, however. One of the earliest ones was the band's updated version of Robert Johnson's Four Until Late, from the Fresh Cream album.

Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Dirty Water has long since been adopted by the city of Boston, getting played at virtually every sporting event, yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist Dickie Dodd, incidently, was a cast member on the original Micky Mouse Club TV show.

Artist: Kinks
Title: Sunny Afternoon
Source: CD: Face To Face
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
1966 was the year that Ray Davies's songwriting began to take a sardonic turn. Sunny Afternoon, using a first person perspective, manages to lampoon the idle rich through mock sympathy. Good stuff.

Artist: Donovan
Title: The Trip
Source: CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer: Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
Donovan had already established a reputation in his native Scotland as the UK's answer to Bob Dylan, but had not had much success in the US, where his records were being released on the low-distribution Hickory label. That all changed in 1966, however, when he began to move beyond his folk roots and embrace a more electric sound. Unlike Dylan, who basically kept the same style as his acoustic songs, simply adding electic instruments, Donovan took a more holistic approach. The result was a body of music with a much broader range of sounds. The first of these new electric tunes was Sunshine Superman, sometimes cited as the first top 10 psychedelic hit. The B side of Sunshine Superman was a song called The Trip, which managed to be even more psychedelic than it's A side. Both songs soon appeared on Donovan's major US label debut, an album that was not even released in the UK due to a contractual dispute between the singer/songwriter and Pye Records.

Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Paint It Black
Source: CD: Aftermath
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
One of the truly great Rolling Stones songs. 'Nuff said.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Gilbert/Scala/Esposito/Thielhelm
Label: Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1966
The Blues Magoos (original spelling: Bloos) were either the first or second band to use the word psychedelic in an album title. Both they and the 13th Floor Elevators released their debut albums in 1966 and it is unclear which one actually came out first. What's not in dispute is the fact that Psychedelic Lollipop far outsold The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. One major reason for this was the fact that (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet was a huge national hit in early 1967, which helped album sales considerably (of course the fact that they were on Mercury Records, one of the "big six" labels of the time, didn't hurt). Despite having a unique sound and a look to match (including electric suits), the Magoos were unable to duplicate the success of Nothin' Yet on subsequent releases, partially due to Mercury's pairing of two equally marketable songs on the band's next single without indicating to stations which one they were supposed to be playing.

Artist: Byrds
Title: I Know My Rider (I Know You Rider)
Source: CD: Fifth Dimension (CD bonus track)
Writer: arr. McGuinn/Clark/Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
Throughout their existence the Byrds recorded more material than they actually released. This has proven a boon to the folks at BMG/Sony, who have been able to include several bonus tracks on every remastered Byrds CD on their Legacy label. This week we have a classic Byrds reworking of an old folk tune, I Know My Rider (I Know You Rider), recorded in 1966, around the same time as their sessions for the Fifth Dimension album.

Artist: Cher
Title: Hey Joe
Source: LP: Cher's Golden Greats (originally released on LP: With Love, Cher and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Billy Roberts
Label: Imperial
Year: 1967
Considering that Cher's first major hit as a solo artist was Bang Bang, a song about shooting one's lover, it was probably inevitable that she would record her own version of the venerable Hey Joe, which deals with the same subject. Also, given Cher's established style with Bang Bang, it is no surprise that she chose to go with the slowed-down arrangement first used by Tim Rose and popularized in England by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. What may come as a surprise, however, is that Cher's 1967 version of Hey Joe actually did better on the US charts than any other version except the Leaves' fast-tempo hit from 1966.

Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: I Won't Hurt You
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer: Harris/Lloyd/Markley
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
When Rhino decided to revive the Nuggets concept in the 80s with a series of LPs, they really didn't do much documentation on stuff like what album the song was from or what year the song came out. Normally that's not a problem. This song, however, was included on two consecutive albums, one on a small indy label in 1966 and the other on Reprise in 1967, with a slightly longer running time. Since the running time of this track seems closer to the Reprise version, I'm assuming that's what it's from.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Double Yellow Line
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound; stereo version: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1967
One of the Original Sound singles that also appeared on the Warner Brothers LP Bonniwell Music Machine, Double Yellow Line features lyrics that were literally written by Bonniwell on the way to the recording studio. In fact, his inability to stay in his lane while driving with one hand and writing with the other resulted in a traffic ticket. The ever resourceful Bonniwell wrote the rest of the lyrics on the back of the ticket and even invited the officer in to watch the recording session. The officer declined.

Artist: Sons Of Champlain
Title: Fat City
Source: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Bob Moitoza
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
One of the most popular cover bands in Marin County California in the early 60s was Mill Valley's The Opposite Six. In 1967 the group decided to switch to original material, changing their name to the Sons Of Champlain in the process. Although never one of the top selling San Francisco bands, the Sons nonetheless recorded some decent tracks, the earliest of which was a single called Fat City, released on the Verve label.

Artist: Red Crayola
Title: The Parable Of Arable Land (part one)
Source: LP: The Parable Of Arable Land
Writer: Thompson/Cunningham/Barthelme
Label: International Artists
Year: 1967
New York had the Velvet Underground. L.A. had the United States of America. San Francisco had 50 Foot Hose. And Texas had the Red Crayola. Formed by art students at the University of St. Thomas (Texas) in 1966, the band was led by singer/guitarist and visual artist Mayo Thompson, along with drummer Frederick Barthelme (brother of novelist Donald Barthelme) and Steve Cunningham. The band was almost universally panned by the rock press but has since achieved cult status as a pioneer of avant-garde psychedelic punk and is considered a forerunner of "lo-fi" rock. The band's debut album, The Parable Of Arable Land, released in 1967, was reportedly recorded in one continuous session and utilizes the services of "The Familiar Ugly", a group of about 50 friends of the band, each of which was invited to play whatever they pleased on whatever sound-producing device they chose to (such as blowing into a soda bottle), filling time between the actual songs on the album. Roky Erickson,leader of the Red Crayola's International Artists labelmates 13th Floor Elevators, can be heard playing organ as part of the cacaphony.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1204 (starts 1/26/12)

Artist: Frantics
Title: Human Monkey
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Miller/Stevenson
Label: Rhino (original label: Action)
Year: 1966
The Frantics were a popular cover band in Tacoma, Washington in the early 60s. Guitarist Jerry Miller, however, had greater ambitions and eventually relocated to San Francisco, taking the band's name and two of its members, keyboardist Chuck "Steaks" Schoning and drummer Don Stevenson, with him. After recruiting bassist Bob Mosely the Frantics cut their only single, a Motown-style dance number called the Human Monkey, in 1966. The group would soon shed Schoning and pick up two new members, changing their name to Moby Grape in the process.

Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints (originally released as 45 RPM single B side; re-released as A side)
Source: CD: Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock
Writer: Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Priority (original label: All-American; reissued nationally on Uni Records)
Year: 1967
Incense and Peppermints started off as an instrumental, mostly because the band simply couldn't come up with any lyrics. Their producer decided to bring in professional songwriters to finish the song, and ended up giving them full credit for it. This did not sit well with the band members. In fact, they hated the lyrics so much that their regular vocalist refused to sing on the record. Undaunted, the producer brought in the lead vocalist from another local L.A. band to sing the song, which was then put on the B side of The Birdman Of Alcatrash. Somewhere along the line a local DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense An Peppermints as the A side.

Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Feelings
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock
Writer: Coonce/Entner/Fukomoto
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
The Grass Roots had their origins as the San Francisco band the Bedoins, but by 1968 had lost all but one of the original members and had become pretty much a vehicle for the songwriting team of Jeff Barri and P.F. Sloan. They released three singles in 1968, the third of which was Midnight Confessions, the group's only certified gold record. The song immediately preceeding it was Feelings which failed to chart (possibly because it was not written by Sloan and Barri). Of course that means I play Feelings fairly regularly. Midnight Confessions? Not at all.

Artist: Penny Arkade
Title: Swim
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer: Craig Vincent Smith
Label: Rhino
Year: recorded: 1967, released 2009
In 1967 Michael Nesmith, realizing that the Monkees had a limited shelf life, decided to produce a local L.A. band, Penny Arkade, led by singer/songwriter Craig Vincent Smith. Nesmith already had several production credits to his name with the Monkees, including a recording of Smith's Salesman on their 4th LP. Swim, like Salesman, has a touch of country about it; indeed, Nesmith himself was one of the earliest proponents of what would come to be called country-rock. In 1967, however, country-rock was still at least a year away and Nesmith was unable to find a label willing to release the record.

Artist: Beatles
Title: Run For Your Life
Source: LP: Rubber Soul
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
Compared to some of John Lennon's later songs, Run For Your Life comes across as a sexist, even violent expression of jealous posessiveness. However, in 1965 such a viewpoint was quite common; in fact it was pretty much the acceptable norm for the times. Scary, huh? Somehow I just can't imagine Yoko Ono approving of this song.

Artist: James Taylor
Title: Oh, Susanna
Source: LP: Sweet Baby James
Writer: Stephen Foster
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1970
The early 70s saw the rise of the singer/songwriter to prominence on the pop charts, and none was more successful than James Taylor. In addition to his own tunes like Fire And Rain, Taylor would have hits with songs written by his friend Carole King and even remakes of pre-Beatle era pop songs. The oldest song he ever recorded, however, has to be Oh, Susannah, written in the 1800s by the great American songwriter, Stephen Foster, and included on his second LP, Sweet Baby James.

Artist: Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Title: Child Of My Kingdom
Source: CD: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Writer: Brown/Crane
Label: Polydor (original label: Atlantic)
Year: 1968
One of the most unique performers on the British rock scene was Arthur Brown, who was known for his theatrical stage show, including flashing lights, smoke bombs, and band members wearing outrageous costumes.The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, produced by Kit Lambert and the Who's Peter Townshend, was one of the most popular psychedelic albums ever released, hitting the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic. The longest track on that album was the seven-minute Child Of My Kingdom, which closes out side two.

Artist: Them
Title: Dirty Old Man (At The Age Of Sixteen)
Source: LP: Now And Them
Writer: Tom Lane
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them to pursue a solo career, the band returned to Belfast, where they recruited Kenny McDowell to be the group's new lead vocalist. They then relocated to California, where they cut two albums for Tower Records. The second of the two albums featured songs written by the husband and wife team of Sharon Pulley and Tom Lane. The first LP, entitled Now And Them, featured songs from a variety of sources, including one song, Dirty Old Man (At The Age Of Sixteen), written by Lane himself.

Artist: Moody Blues
Title: In Search Of The Lost Chord (part two)
Source: CD: In Search Of The Lost Chord
Writer: Hayward/Pinder/Thomas/Edge
Label: Deram
Year: 1968
After using the London Symphony Orchestra extensively on their second LP, Days Of Future Passed, the Moody Blues played every instrument themselves on the next album, In Search Of The Lost Chord. There were reportedly 33 (or possibly more) different instruments played on the album. Among those was something called a mellotron, which used tape loops of recorded instruments played on a keyboard. Each side was one continuous piece of music, making In Search Of The Lost Chord, released in 1968, one of the first rock concept albums.

Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Watch Yourself
Source: LP: Vol. III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer: Yeazel/Guy
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band usually wrote their own material, they occassionally drew from outside sources. One example is Watch Yourself, written by Robert Yeazel, who in turn based it on a song by blues legend Buddy Guy. Yeazel would go on to join Sugarloaf in time for their second LP, Spaceship Earth, writing much of the material on that album.

Artist: Rare Earth
Title: (I Know I'm) Losing You
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Grant/Holland/Whitfield
Label: Rare Earth
Year: 1970
Although Rare Earth was not the first white act signed to Motown, it was the first successful one. When the band was signed in 1969 it was decided to retool (and rename) one of Motown's existing labels and put Rare Earth on that label. During discussions about what to rename the label one of the band members joking suggested Rare Earth Records. Oddly enough, Motown went with that suggestion, and the band soon scored two consecutive top 10 singles with remakes of previous Motown hits. The first, Get Ready, used virtually the same arrangement as the Temptations original and actually did better on the charts. The follow-up, (I Know I'm) Losing You, was more adventurous, and showed that the group was more than just one hit wonders.

Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Dark Side
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Rogers/Sohns
Label: Dunwich
Year: 1966
Dark Side, written by guitarist Warren Rogers and singer Jim Sohns, is probably the quintessential Shadows of Knight song. It has all the classic elements of a garage rock song: three chords, a blues beat and lots of attitude. Oh, and the lyrics "I love you baby more than birds love the sky". What more can you ask for?

Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol.2-Punk (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in truth the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.

Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Codine
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Revolution soundtrack)
Writer: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Label: Rhino
Year: 1968
Buffy St. Marie's Codine was a popular favorite among the club crowd in mid-60s California. In 1967, L.A. band The Leaves included it on their second LP. Around the same time, up the coast in San Francisco, the Charlatans selected it to be their debut single. The suits at Kama-Sutra Records, however, balked at the choice, and instead released a cover of the Coasters' The Shadow Knows. The novelty-flavored Shadow bombed so bad that the label decided not to release any more Charlatans tracks, thus leaving their version of Codine gathering dust in the vaults until the mid 1990s, when the entire Kama-Sutra sessions were released on CD. Meanwhile, back in 1968, Quicksilver Messenger Service were still without a record contract, despite pulling decent crowds at various Bay Area venues, including a credible appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Despite this, the producers of the quasi-documentary film Revolution decided to include footage of the band playing Codine, and commissioned this studio recording of the song for the soundtrack album.

Artist: Great! Society
Title: Free Advice (alternate version 2)
Source: CD: Born To Be Burned
Writer: Darby Slick
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1966
This alternate take of Free Advice shows the Great! Society for what they were: a talented garage band with a lot of rough edges that they never got the opportunity to smooth things out.

Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Ain't That So
Source: CD: Winds Of Change (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM B side)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
Originally released in the UK as the B side to the 1967 single Good Times (which was itself a B side in the US), Ain't That So made its US debut in 1968, as the B side to the song Monterey (which was a US-only single). Like all the originals released by Eric Burdon and the Animals, writing credits on Ain't That So were shared by the entire band.

Artist: Nazz
Title: Open Your Eyes
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits
Writer: Todd Rundgren
Label: Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year: 1968
The Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. The Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a new solo version would become Rundgren's first major hit five years later).

Artist: James Gang
Title: Fred
Source: CD: Yer' Album
Writer: Joe Walsh
Label: MCA (original label: Bluesway)
Year: 1969
The only rock record to ever be released on the Bluesway label was Yer' Album, the debut LP by Cleveland's James Gang. Featuring Joe Walsh on Guitar (and overdubbed keyboards), Tom Criss (who would leave the band after this album) on bass and Dale Peters on drums, the group was one of the first "power trios" of the 70s. Unlike the group's later efforts, Yer' Album included cover tunes written by such diverse composers as Stephen Stills, Jerry Ragavoy and Jeff Beck, as well as a smattering of original compositions. One of those originals was Fred, a Walsh song that was described in the liner notes as "and it's straaaaaaaange."

Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Teacher
Source: CD: Benefit
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol
Year: 1970
LPs released by British Groups often had different song lineups in the US and the UK. One of the reasons for this is that British labels generally did not include songs that had been released as singles on LPs. In the US, however, running times were 5-10 minutes shorter per LP, and songs that had been included on British LPs would end up being dropped in favor of the latest hit single by the same artist. Jethro Tull, however, was generally an exception to this practice. Both of their first two LPs had exactly the same song lineup on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the only notable exception was the song Teacher, which was released as a single before the UK version of the group's third LP, Benefit. The US version of Benefit has Teacher on it, replacing Just Trying To Be, which would not be issued in the US until the Living In The Past album.

Artist: Who
Title: A Legal Matter
Source: CD: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1965
In early 1966 the Who parted company with their original UK record label, Brunswick, to hook up with the newly formed Reaction Records. This did not sit well with the people at Brunswick, who did their best to sabotage the band's Reaction releases. They did this by releasing single versions of songs from the band's only Brunswick album, My Generation, within days of each new Who single on Reaction. The first of these was The Kids Are Alright/A Legal Matter, which was released right after the first Who single on Reaction, Substitute. The strategy was for the most part unsuccessful, and all these songs ended up on the Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy album, released a couple years later.

Artist: Who
Title: Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands
Source: LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: Decca
Year: 1967
There are at least three versions of Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands. A faster, electric version of the song was released only in the US as the B side to I Can See For Miles, while this semi-latin flavored acoustic version was included on The Who Sell Out. Yet another version is featured as a bonus track on the 1993 CD release of Sell Out.

Artist: Who
Title: I Can See For Miles
Source: CD: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
I Can See For Miles continued a string of top 10 singles in the UK and was the Who's biggest US hit ever. Pete Townshend, however, was disappointed with the song's performance on the UK charts. He said that the song was the ultimate Who song and as such it should have charted even higher than it did. It certainly was one of the heaviest songs of its time and there is some evidence that it prompted Paul McCartney to come up with Helter Skelter in an effort to take the heaviest song ever title back for the Beatles. What makes the story even more bizarre is that at the time McCartney reportedly had never actually heard I Can See For Miles and was going purely by what he read in a record review. I Can See For Miles was also used as the closing track of side one of The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967. Some of the commercials and jingles heard at the beginning of the track were recorded by the band itself. Others were lifted (without permission) from Radio London, a pirate radio station operating off the English coast.

Artist: Kinks
Title: Sunny Afternoon
Source: LP: Face To Face
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
My family got its first real stereo just in time for me to catch this song at the peak of its popularity. My school had just gone into split sessions and all my classes were over by one o'clock, which gave me the chance to explore the world of top 40 radio for a couple hours every day without the rest of the family telling me to turn it down (or off).

Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
One of Simon And Garfunkel's most popular songs, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) originally appeared on their 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme. The recording was never, however, released as a single by the duo (although it did appear as a 1967 B side). When Columbia released a greatest hits compilation album (after the duo had split up), a live acoustic version of the song was included on the album. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) did make the top 40 in 1967, when it was recorded by Harper's Bizarre, a group featuring future Doobie Brothers and Van Halen producer Ted Templeman on lead vocals.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Love Or Confusion
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
A little-known fact is that the original European version of Are You Experienced, in addition to having a different song lineup, consisted entirely of mono recordings. When Reprise got the rights to release the album in North America, its own engineers created new stereo mixes from the 4-track master tapes. As most of the instrumental tracks had already been mixed down to single tracks, the engineers found themselves doing things like putting the vocals all the way on one side of the mix, with reverb effects and guitar solos occupying the other side and all the instruments dead center. Such is the case with Love Or Confusion, with some really bizarre stereo panning thrown in at the end of the track. It's actually kind of fun to listen to with headphones on, as I did when I bought my first copy of the album on reel-to-reel tape (the tape deck was in the same room as the TV). On the downside, the vocals on the stereo mix sound far away when played back through a single speaker.

Artist: Love
Title: Alone Again Or (alternate mix)
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer: Bryan MacLean
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Finishing out this week's show we have an alternate mix of the opening track for Love's Forever Changes album, generally considered to be their best studio work and a surprisingly popular album in England, despite Love never having played there. Bryan McLean once said that he was unhappy with the released mix of Alone Again Or, due to the producer's decision to give Arthur Lee's harmony line a greater prominence in the mix than McLean's lead vocal. This was probably done for consistency's sake, as Lee was the lead vocalist on an overwhelming majority of Love's recordings. This mono alternate mix uses a different balance of vocals, although McLean's part is still not as prominent as McLean would have preferred. McLean himself re-recorded the song on an early 70s solo album, but reportedly was still not satisfied with the way the song sounded.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1203 (starts 1/19/12)

Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Like A Rolling Stone
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Bob Dylan incurred the wrath of folk purists when he decided to use electric instruments for his 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. The opening track on the album is the six-minute Like A Rolling Stone, a song that was also selected to be the first single released from the new album. After the single was pressed, the shirts at Columbia Records decided to cancel the release due to its length. An acetate copy of the record, however, made it to a local New York club, where, by audience request, the record was played over and over until it was worn out (acetate copies not being as durable as their vinyl counterparts). When Columbia started getting calls from local radio stations demanding copies of the song the next morning they decided to release the single after all. Like A Rolling Stone ended up going all the way to the number two spot on the US charts, doing quite well in several other countries as well. Personnel on this historic recording included guitarist Michael Bloomfield, pianist Paul Griffin, drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Joe Madho, guitarist Charlie McCoy and tambourinist Bruce Langhorne. In addition, guitarist Al Kooper, who was on the scene as a guest of producer Tom Wilson, sat in on organ, ad-libbing a part that so impressed Dylan that he insisted it be given a prominent place in the final mixdown. This in turn led to Kooper permanently switching over to keyboards for the remainder of his career.

Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: You Didn't Have To Be So Nice
Source: LP: The John Sebastian Songbook
Writer: John Sebastian
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1965
The second single released by the Lovin' Spoonful proved to be just as popular as their first one and helped establish the band as one of the premier acts of the folk-rock movement. Unlike the West Coast folk rock artists such as the Byrds and Barry McGuire, who focused on the socio-political issues of the day, John Sebastian tended to write happy songs with catchy melodies such as You Didn't Have To Be So Nice. As a result, the Lovin' Spoonful for a while rivaled the Beatles in popularity while still managing to maintain some street credit due mainly to their Greenwich Village roots.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Hear My Train A Comin'
Source: CD: Blues
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy
Year: 1967
Sometime in 1967 somebody gave Jimi Hendrix an acoustic 12-string guitar to play around with. As Hendrix generally had a tape recorder running when he was in the studio (just in case he came up with something on the spur of the moment he might want to return to later), he managed to capture this performance of a tune he was working on that wouldn't become an official song until a few years later. The presence of numerous tape dropouts suggests that this recording was simply a practice tape that luckily never got erased and reused.

Artist: John Fahey
Title: Dance Of Death
Source: LP: Zabriskie Point soundtrack
Writer: John Fahey
Label: 4 Men With Beards (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1970
Although the movie Zabriskie Point has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made, the soundtrack is another story altogether. Most of the attention has been paid to the Pink Floyd tracks on the album, however there are other gems as well, such as this instrumental piece by acoustic guitarist John Fahey. As far as I can tell Dance Of Death does not appear on any of Fahey's own LPs.

Artist: Kinks
Title: See My Friends
Source: LP: Kinkdom
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
Possibly the most psychedelic recording ever made by the Kinks, See My Friends was originally released as a single in the UK in 1965, making the top 10. Ray Davies has been heard to say the song is about the death of his older sister Rene, who had given him his first guitar for his 13th birthday shortly before her death from an undiagnosed hole in her heart. Like many of the Kinks' UK singles, See My Friends was not released as a single in the US, appearing instead on the US-only LP Kinkdom.

Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Anything
Source: CD: Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released on LP: Winds Of Change)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
The first album by the "new" Eric Burdon And The Animals, Winds Of Change, included three songs that were released as singles, however only one of the three got airplay in both the US and the UK. The US-only single was a song that Eric Burdon has since said was the one he was most proud of writing, a love generation song called Anything. In fact Burdon liked the song well enough to re-record it for a solo album in 1995.

Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Christmas Camel
Source: CD: Procol Harum (US album title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale)
Writer: Brooker/Reid
Label: Salvo (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
In 1966 Gary Brooker, former member of British cover band the Paramounts, formed a songwriting partnership with lyricist Keith Reid. By spring of 1967 the two had at least an album's worth of songs written but no band to play them. They solved the dilemma by placing an ad in Melody Maker and soon formed a group called the Pinewoods. Their very first record was A Whiter Shade Of Pale, which soon became the number one song on the British charts (after the Pinewoods changed their name to Procol Harum). The problem was that the group didn't know any other songs, a problem that was solved by firing the drummer and guitarist and replacing them with two of Brooker's former bandmates, B.J. Wilson and Robin Trower. This second version of the group soon recorded an LP, which included several strong tracks such as A Christmas Camel, making its Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut this week.

Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: St. Stephen/The Eleven
Source: LP: Live Dead
Writer: Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
In 1969, after going way over budget on the LP Aoxomoxoa, the Grateful Dead decided to release a double-LP live album, essentially giving Warner Brothers three albums for the price of one. Unlike the studio LP, which attempted to combine live material with studio overdubs, Live Dead was a documentation of two nights' worth of recent performances at the Fillmore West. At the time the band pretty much stuck to the same setlist for each performance and the songs were generally played as one continuous piece in concert. For the album, the best performance of each song was chosen and then arranged in the same order that they had been performed. Side two picks up the first nights' performance of St. Stephen (which had also appeared on Aoxomoxoa) and continues into the second night's version of The Eleven, a performance that rock critic Robert Christian called at the time "the finest rock improvisation ever recorded." Within a couple years St. Stephen would be dropped from the band's setlist and a performance of the piece in the band's later decades was considered by fans to be a special treat.

Artist: Beatles
Title: Birthday/Yer Blues
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
One of the great ironies of rock history was that the album entitled simply The Beatles was the one that had the fewest songs with all four of the band members playing on them. By 1968 the Beatles were experiencing internal conflicts, and nearly all of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's songs were played by just the two of them, while George Harrison's songs (and Ringo Starr's single contribution as a songwriter) featured an array of some of the UK's top musicians (including guitarist Eric Clapton). The opening tracks of side three of the album are typical of this approach, as Birthday is essentially a McCartney solo piece. Yer Blues, on the other hand, has Lennon singing and playing guitar, with probably McCartney on bass and drums. The first performance of Yer Blues in front of a live audience was in December of 1968 as part of the Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus. It was not the Beatles however, that performed the tune. Instead, Yer Blues was played by the Dirty Mac, a jam band consisting of Lennon, Clapton, drummer Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), and the Stones' Keith Richards on bass. That performance was never seen, other than by the studio audience, until the entire Circus was released on DVD a few years ago (Mick Jagger reportedly had the entire project shelved due to his dissatisfaction with the Stones' performance).

Artist: Cream
Title: Sitting On Top Of The World
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer: Chester Burnett
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Throughout their existence British blues supergroup Cream recorded covers of blues classics. One of the best of these is Sitting On Top Of The World from the album Wheels Of Fire, which in its earliest form was written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon and recorded by the Mississippi Shieks in 1930. Cream's cover uses the lyrics from the 1957 rewrite of the song by Chester Burnett, better know as Howlin' Wolf.

Artist: Monks
Title: Complication
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Burger/Spangler/Havlicek/Johnston/Shaw
Label: Rhino (original label: Polydor)
Year: 1966
In 1964 a group of American GIs stationed in Germany decided to get together and form a rock band. After their respective tours of duty ended they decided to stay in the country and in 1966 recorded this single for Polydor. Knowing that a large segment of their audience had a rudimentary grasp of English at best, they deliberately crafted a tune that would be easy to comprehend with clear, almost chanted lyrics. To take the chanting concept a step further they all had square patches shaved off the top of their heads and dressed in brown robes. After thinking about it for a couple days I think I've finally figured out who these guys remind me of: early AC/DC, especially Von Scott's vocals. Compare this to Jailbreak. You'll hear what I mean.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Discrepancy
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1967
Last week I did a tribute to Sean Bonniwell of the Music Machine, who died from lung cancer on December 20th, 2011. I inadvertantly left out one song I really wanted to play, however. That song is Discrepancy, one of Bonniwell's most sophisticated efforts. The song actually features two simultaneous vocal lines. The main one, sung by Bonniwell (in the left channel) as a single melody line, tells the story of a deteriorating relationship. In the opposite channel we hear a breathy multi-part vocal line that tells the same story from the perspective of the subconscious. The two come together lyrically from time to time to express key concepts such as the line "now I know I'm losing you", only to once again diverge onto their separate tracks. The bridge serves to further unite the two divergent lines with the repeating plea to "tell me what to do". Discrepancy is one of the few tracks recorded by the original Music Machine lineup that was never released on Original Sound Records, either as an LP track or on a 45 RPM single. Instead, the song was included on the LP Bonniwell Music Machine, released by Warner Brothers in 1967.

Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was originally released to Los Angeles area radio stations it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Comin' Back To Me
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer: Marty Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to this Marty Balin tune. Balin, in his 2003 liner notes to the remastered release of Surrealistic Pillow, claims that Comin' Back To Me was written in one sitting under the influence of some primo stuff given to him by Paul Butterfield. Other players on the recording include Balin and Paul Kantner on guitars, Jack Casady on bass and Grace Slick on recorder.

Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Source: CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released in US only as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: Jim McCarty
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
By 1967 the Yardbirds had moved far away from the blues roots and were on their fourth lead guitarist, studio whiz Jimmy Page. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor shows signs of Page's innovative guitar style (such as using a violin bow) that would help define 70s rock with his next band, Led Zeppelin.

Artist: Tommy Boyce And Bobby Hart
Title: Words
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer: Boyce/Hart
Label: Rhino
Year: 1965
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were really hoping to be selected for the new band that Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures was putting together to star in a new weekly TV series. It didn't work out for them, but several of the songs they wrote appeared on the Monkees albums, including Words, heard here in its previously unreleased 1965 demo form.

Artist: Seeds
Title: Mr. Farmer
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
With two tracks (Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard) from their first album getting decent airplay on L.A. radio stations in 1966 the Seeds headed back to the studio to record a second LP, A Web Of Sound. The first single released from the album was Mr. Farmer, a song that once again did well locally. The only national hit for the Seeds came when Pushin' Too Hard was re-released in December of 1966, hitting its national peak the following spring. Wait a sec...didn't I just say this last week?

Artist: Byrds
Title: It Happens Every Day
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday (bonus track)
Writer: David Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
The Byrds had a unique problem in early 1967: they were writing and recording more quality material than they could fit on an album. As a result some truly worthy songs like It Happens Every Day got left off Younger Than Yesterday. It's possible that the song would have been included on the next Byrds album, but with David Crosby no longer a member of the band by the time The Notorious Byrd Brothers came out, it was probably deemed inappropriate to include it there. Ironically, it was revealed years later that an uncredited Crosby did play on several tracks on the Notorious Byrd Brothers, despite having left the band before its release.

Artist: King Crimson
Title: The Court Of The Crimson King
Source: LP: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer: MacDonald/Sinfield
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
Perhaps the most influential progressive rock album of all time was King Crimson's debut LP, In The Court Of The Crimson King. The band, in its original incarnation, included Robert Fripp on guitar, Ian MacDonald on keyboards and woodwinds, Greg Lake on vocals and bass, David Giles on drums and Peter Sinfield as a dedicated lyricist. The title track, which takes up the second half of side two of the LP, features music composed by MacDonald, who would leave the group after their second album, later resurfacing as a founding member of Foreigner. The album's distinctive cover art (posted on the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page) came from a painting by computer programmer Barry Godber, who died of a heart attack less than a year after the album was released. According to Fripp, the artwork on the inside is a portrait of the Crimson King, whose manic smile is in direct contrast to his sad eyes. The album, song and artwork were the inspiration for Stephen King's own Crimson King, the insane antagonist of his Dark Tower saga who is out to destroy all of reality, including our own.

Artist: Spirit
Title: Nature's Way
Source: CD: Best Of Spirit (originally released on LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus)
Writer: Randy California
Label: Epic
Year: 1970
Nature's Way is one of the best-known and best-loved songs in the Spirit catalog. Originally released on the 1970 LP The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus, the song was finally issued as a single in 1973, long after lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes had left the band. The single mix is a bit different from the album version, particularly at the end of the song, which originally ended with a tympani roll by drummer Ed Cassidy. The single version ends with the chord immediately preceding that roll.

Artist: Spirit
Title: Elijah
Source: CD: Spirit
Writer: John Locke
Label: Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year: 1968
Since the mid-1960s many bands have had one long piece that they play in concert that is specifically designed to allow individual band members to strut their stuff. In a few cases, such as Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida or Lynnard Skynnard's Freebird, it becomes their best-known song. In most cases, though, a studio version of the piece gets put on an early album and never gets heard on the radio. Such is the case with Spirit's show-stopper Elijah, which was reportedly never played the same way twice. Elijah, written by keyboardist John Locke, starts with a hard-rockin' main theme that is followed by a jazzier second theme that showcases one of the lead instruments (guitar, keyboards). The piece then comes to a dead stop while one of the members has a solo section of their own devising. This is followed by the main theme, repeating several times until every member has had their own solo section. The piece ends with a return to the main theme followed by a classic power rock ending.

Artist: Spirit
Title: Animal Zoo
Source: CD: Best Of Spirit
Writer: Jay Ferguson
Label: Epic
Year: 1970
The last album by the original lineup of Spirit was The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus, released in 1970. The album was originally going to be produced by Neil Young, but due to other commitments Young had to bow out, recommending David Briggs, who had already produced Young's first album with Crazy Horse, as a replacement. The first song to be released as a single was Animal Zoo, but the tune barely cracked the top 100 charts. The album itself did better on progressive FM stations and has since come to be regarded as a classic. Shortly after the release of Twelve Dreams, Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes left Spirit to form Jo Jo Gunne.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1202 (starts 1/12/12)

This week's edition of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era is dedicated to Sean Bonniwell, who passed away on Dec. 20th 2011 of lung cancer. I thought about doing a tribute set in the second hour, but then hit upon an idea that I think Bonniwell himself would have appreciated: a Music Machine track in every song set. The result is a show with no less than eleven tracks from Bonniwell's Music Machine, one of the most underrated garage-psych bands of the late 1960s. Bonniwell was one of the first rock musicians to take a holistic approach to his musical presentation. The name of the band itself reflected Bonniwell's idea to segue directly from song to song for an entire set, never pausing long enough to let members of the audience call out requests that Bonniwell had no desire to play. Visually, the Music Machine had a look all their own, with all the members dressing entirely in black (including dying their hair) and wearing one glove on stage, years before Michael Jackson did his first moonwalk. The songs themselves showed a sophistication seldom, if ever, heard among their contemporaries. Elements of Bonniwell's music can be heard in later bands such as the Doors (Ray Manzarek's keyboard work has much in common with that of organist Doug Rhodes) and Iron Butterfly (in particular Doug Ingle's vocal style). In addition to the Music Machine tracks we have nearly two dozen more tunes by the usual variety of artists, including one or two you probably never heard of as well as some old favorites like Jimi Hendrix, the Standells and even the Grateful Dead. See the songlist below for details.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Some Other Drum
Source: CD: Turn On
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables
Year: 1966
The Music Machine is best known for its high energy arrangements and snarling vocals, as typified by their greatest hit Talk Talk. Some Other Drum, from the Music Machine's debut LP, shows a different side of Sean Bonniwell's songwriting. Sounding a bit like the Lovin' Spoonful, Some Other Drum emphasizes the more traditional elements of pop songwriting such as a catchy melody and layered harmonies and shows that Bonniwell, if he wanted to, could probably have been quite successful if he had chosen to go that route.

Artist: Beatles
Title: Words Of Love
Source: CD: Beatles For Sale (released in US on LP: Beatles VI)
Writer: Buddy Holly
Label: Parlophone (US label: Capitol)
Year: 1964 (US release: 1965)
By 1964 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were already well on their way to becoming one of the most successful songwriting teams in history. Despite this, the Beatles continued to record cover tunes such as Words Of Love, which had been one of Buddy Holly's biggest hits (and one of the few without a co-writing credit for producer Norm Petty). It wasn't until 1965, with the release of Rubber Soul, that the Beatles would write 100% of the material that they recorded.

Artist: Love
Title: My Little Red Book
Source: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Love)
Writer: Bacharach/David
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
My Little Red Book was a song originally composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the soundtrack of the movie What's New Pussycat and performed by Manfred Mann. I think it's safe to say that Bacharach and David did not intend the song to sound anything like this recording by Love, the first rock record ever released on the Elektra label.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Absolutely Positively
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1967
I'm going to use Sean Bonniwell's own words to describe Absolutely Positively: "Demanding that you get what you don't have without knowing what you want is the same as wanting what you haven't got, then not wanting it after you get it." Heady stuff that describes a very American attitude that has only become even more prevalent in the years since the song was written.

Artist: Byrds
Title: Mind Gardens
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer: David Crosby
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Mind Gardens is a perfect example of what songwriter David Crosby refers to as "one of those weird David Crosby songs". The song is a deliberate attempt at abandoning Western concepts such as chord progressions in favor of a more modal approach favored in Eastern composing. Roger McGuinn's guitar perfectly compliments Crosby's esoteric lyrics and melody on this track from the Younger Than Yesterday album, the last LP to be completed with Crosby as a full member of the Byrds.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Castles Made Of Sand
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
When I was a junior in high school I used to fall asleep on the living room couch with the headphones on, usually listening to pre-recorded tapes of either the Beatles' Revolver album or one of the first two album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. One song in particular from the second Hendrix album, Axis: Bold As Love, always gave me a chill when I heard it: Castles Made Of Sand. The song serves as a warning not to put too much faith in your dreams, and stands in direct contrast to the usual goal-oriented American attitude.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Double Yellow Line
Source: Beyond The Garage
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1967
After the success of Talk Talk, the Music Machine issued a series of unsuccessful singles on the Original Sound label. Band leader Sean Bonniwell attributed this lack of success to mismanagement by record company people and the band's own manager. Eventually those singles would be re-issued on Warner Brothers on an album called Bonniwell Music Machine, along with a handful of new songs. One of the best of these singles was Double Yellow Line, which Bonniwell said he wrote while driving to a gig. This seems to be a good place to mention the rest of the original Music Machine lineup, which consisted of Mark Landon on lead guitar. Ron Edgar on drums, Doug Rhodes on organ and Keith Olsen on bass. This lineup would dissolve before the release of the Bonniwell Music Machine album but was featured on the majority of tracks on the LP nonetheless.

Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Bringing Home The Bacon
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Brooker/Reid
Label: Chrysalis
Year: 1973
After the departure of original lead guitarist Robin Trower, the remaining members of Procol Harum continued to record quality albums such as Grand Hotel, although their airplay was limited to sporadic plays on progressive FM stations. One song that probably should have gotten more attention than it did was Bringing Home The Bacon, from the aforementioned Grand Hotel album. The group would experience a brief return to top 40 radio the following year with the release of their live version of Conquistador, a track that originally appeared on the band's 1967 debut LP.

Artist: Leslie West
Title: Blood Of The Sun
Source: 45 RPM single B side (single taken from LP: Mountain)
Writer: West/Pappaliardi/Collins
Label: Windfall
Year: 1969
After the Vagrants disbanded guitarist Leslie Weinstein changed his last name to West and recorded a solo album called Mountain. Helping him with the project was producer Felix Pappaliardi, who had previously worked with Cream on their Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire albums. The two meshed so well that they decided to form a band with drummer Corky Laing, using the name Mountain. One of the first gigs by the new band was the Woodstock festival, where they played Blood Of The Sun to an enthusiastic crowd. This week, making its Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut, we have the original studio version of the tune.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: The People In Me
Source: CD: Turn On
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
After Talk Talk soared into the upper reaches of the US charts the Music Machine's management made a tactical error. Instead of promoting the follow-up single, The People In Me, to the largest possible audience, the band's manager gave exclusive air rights to a new station at the far end of the Los Angeles AM radio dial. As local bands like the Music Machine depended on airplay in L.A. as a necessary step to getting national exposure, the move proved disastrous. Without any airplay on influential stations such as KFI, The People In Me was unable to get any higher than the # 66 spot on the national charts. Even worse for the band, the big stations remembered the slight when subsequent singles by the Music Machine were released, and by mid-1967 the original lineup had disbanded.

Artist: Doors
Title: Unhappy Girl
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer: The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a place called the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).

Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Overdrive
Source: LP: Sailor
Writer: Boz Scaggs
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
The Steve Miller Band, in its early years, was in a sense an American version of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, serving as a launching pad for the careers of Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, among others. This early Scaggs tune shows a harder-edged side to the Boz than most of his later solo hits.

Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Doin' That Rag
Source: CD: Aoxomoxoa
Writer: Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
After spending six months on their second LP, Anthem Of The Sun (and going way overbudget in the process), the Grateful Dead reeled things in a bit (but not all that much) for their third effort, Aoxomoxoa. Like Anthem Of The Sun, Aoxomoxoa still combined live recordings with studio overdubs, but the individual songs were shorter and more distinct than on the previous effort. One good example is Doin' That Rag, a song that inexplicably disappeared from the band's live repertoire relatively quickly.

Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: CD: Best Of The Standells (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on movie soundtrack LP: Riot On Sunset Strip)
Writer: Valentino/Fleck
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to this 1967 track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The track sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug usage among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Astrologically Incompatible
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1967
Astrologically Incompatible, in addition to being one of the first known rock songs to make references to the signs of the zodiac (which would become fashionable in the following decade), marks a transition point in the history of the Music Machine. One of the last tracks recorded by the original lineup, it was also the B side of the first single released under the name Bonniwell Music Machine on Warner Brothers. The horn overdubs were played by Bonniwell himself and organist Doug Rhodes, using then state-of-the-art 8-track technology.

Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
Starting off this week's show is one of the iconic songs of the summer of love. Interestingly enough, this was supposed to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash, but somehow ended up getting all the airplay. I haven't bothered to actually count, but I wouldn't be surprised to find I have more copies of this particular song than any other. It appears on just about every collection of psychedelic music ever assembled, it seems. I do have a copy of the original 45, but when I bring that in I generally play...you guessed it, The Birdman of Alkatrash.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Trouble
Source: LP: Turn On
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
Sean Bonniwell had definite plans for the Music Machine's first album. His primary goal was to have all original material (with the exception of a slowed-down version of Billy Roberts' Hey Joe that he and fellow songwriter Tim Rose had been working on; before you ask, both Rose and the Music Machine recorded it before Jimi Hendrix did). Unfortunately, the shirts at Original Sound Records did not take their own company name seriously and inserted four cover songs that the band had recorded for a local TV show. The best way to listen to Turn On The Music Machine, then, is to program your CD player to skip all the extra cover songs. Listened to that way, the album becomes an 8-song EP and this track becomes the second song on the disc, following the classic Talk Talk.

Artist: Leaves
Title: Hey Joe
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Billy Roberts
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1966
In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.

Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Oh Yeah
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Elias McDaniel
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The original British blues bands like the Yardbirds made no secret of the fact that they had created their own version of a music that had come from Chicago. The Shadows Of Knight, on the other hand, were a Chicago band that created their own version of the British blues, bringing the whole thing full circle. After taking their version of Van Morrison's Gloria into the top 10 early in 1966, the Shadows (which had added "of Knight" to their name just prior to releasing Gloria) decided to follow it up with an updated version of Bo Diddley's Oh Yeah. Although the song did not have a lot of national top 40 success, it did help establish the Shadows' reputation as one of the premier garage-punk bands.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: The Day Today
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released
Writer: Bonniwell/Olsen
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1967
For some unknown reason, every person who wrote a song in the late 1960s wrote a song like The Day Today; a slow, somewhat sappy tune with a kind of hokey spoken section in place of an instrumental break. (I even wrote one myself called Leaves. I cringe every time I think of it.) The odd thing about The Day Today is that it is a rare instance of Sean Bonniwell collaborating with another songwriter (in this case Music Machine bassist Keith Olsen, who himself was about to embark on a career as a record producer). What possessed people to write things like this is beyond me, but just in case you are one of the few that can appreciate this sort of song, here it is. The rest of us can take comfort in the fact that the track is less than three minutes long.

Artist: Turtles
Title: To See The Sun
Source: The Turtles-1968
Writer: The Turtles
Label: Rhino
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Turtles, feeling restricted by the dictates of producers and record company people, decided to rent studio time to produce some tracks of their own. The result was four songs, three of which were rejected outright by their label, White Whale. (The fourth track, Surfer Joe, made it onto their Battle of the Bands album). Several years later a new local L.A. record label, Rhino Records, was looking to move beyond the niche it had carved out for itself as a novelty label. The chance to make previously unreleased material such as To See The Sun from a band as well-known as the Turtles was just what the label was looking for, and, along with re-releasing long out-of-print Turtles albums, got the label moving in a whole new direction that they continue to excel at.

Artist: Crosby, Stills and Nash
Title: Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Source: Crosby, Stills and Nash
Writer: Stephen Stills
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
After the demise of Buffalo Springfield, Stephen Stills headed for New York, where he worked with Al Kooper on the Super Session album and recorded several demo tapes of his own, including a new song called Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (reportedly written for his then-girlfriend Judy Collins). After his stint in New York he returned to California, where he started hanging out in the Laurel Canyon home of David Crosby, who had been fired from the Byrds in 1967. Crosby's house at that time was generally filled with a variety of people coming and going, and Crosby and Stills soon found themselves doing improvised harmonies on each other's material in front of a friendly, if somewhat stoned, audience. It was not long before they invited Graham Nash, whom they heard had been having problems of his own with his bandmates in the Hollies, to come join them in Laurel Canyon. The three soon began recording together, and in 1969 released the album Crosby, Stills and Nash. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes was chosen as the opening track for the new album and was later released (in edited form) as a single.

Artist: Front Line
Title: Got Love
Source: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Lanigan/Philipet
Label: Rhino (original label: York)
Year: 1965
The Front Line was a band from San Rafael, California whose story in many ways was typical of their time. Marin County, being a fairly upscale place, had its share of clubs catering to the sons and daughters of its affluent residents. Of course, these teens wanted to hear live performances of their favorite top 40 tunes and bands like the Front Line made a decent enough living catering to their preferences. Like most bands of the time, the Front Line had one song that was of their own creation, albeit one that was somewhat derivative of the kinds of tunes they usually performed so as not to scare off their audience. That song was Got Love, which was released on the York label in 1965.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: Turn On (also released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
The Music Machine's big hit.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Come On In
Source: CD: Turn On (also released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
The B side of the Music Machine's big hit.

Artist: Seeds
Title: Mr. Farmer
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: A Web Of Sound)
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
With two tracks (Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard) from their first album getting decent airplay on L.A. radio stations in 1966 the Seeds headed back to the studio to record a second LP, A Web Of Sound. The first single released from the album was Mr. Farmer, a song that once again did well locally. The only national hit for the Seeds came when Pushin' Too Hard was re-released in December of 1966, hitting its national peak the following spring.

Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: San Franciscan Nights
Source: Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released on LP: Winds of Change and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
In late 1966, after losing several original members over a period of about a year, the original Animals disbanded. Eric Burdon, after releasing one single as a solo artist (but using the Animals name), decided to form a "new" Animals. After releasing a moderately successful single, When I Was Young, the new band appeared at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. While in the area, the band fell in love with the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, during what came to be called the Summer Of Love. The first single to be released from their debut album, Winds Of Change, was a tribute to the city by the bay called San Franciscan Nights. Because of the topicality of the song's subject matter, San Franciscan Nights was not released in the UK as a single. Instead, the song Good Times (which was the US B side of the record), became the new group's biggest UK hit to date (and one of the Animals' biggest UK hits overall). Eventually San Franciscan Nights was released as a single in the UK as well (with a different B side) and ended up doing quite well.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Me, Myself And I
Source: Beyond The Garage
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1968
With the members of the original Music Machine gone their separate ways, Sean Bonniwell recruited a whole new lineup to record and perform as the Bonniwell Music Machine. The new lineup included Guile Wisdom on lead guitar, Jerry Harris on drums, Harry Garfield on organ and Eddie Jones on bass. The new lineup provided a handful of tracks for the LP Bonniwell Music Machine in 1967 and released three singles on Warner Brothers, none of which made any headway on the charts, despite being among Bonniwell's best songs. The first of the singles was Me, Myself And I, a song that Bonniwell himself described as "punk pop" and one that presaged the "me first" attitude that would characterize the disco era in the late 70s.

Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title: Bad Moon Rising
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Writer: John Fogerty
Label: Rhino
Year: 1969
It's a mystery to me why the Woodstock movie completely ignores the presence of Creedence Clearwater Revival, especially considering that they were at their commercial peak at the time of the performance. Bad Moon Rising was one of a series of consecutive hits for the band that each made it just short of the top of the charts, stalling out at # 2.

Artist: Johnny Winter
Title: Rollin' And Tumblin'
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: The Progressive Blues Experiment)
Writer: McKinley Morganfield
Label: United Artists (original label: Sonobeat)
Year: 1968
Johnny Winter's first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, was originally released in 1968 on the Texas-based Sonobeat label. The album featured a mix of Winter originals and blues cover tunes such as the Muddy Waters classic Rollin' And Tumblin'. A ctitical success, the album was picked up and reissued on the Imperial label a year later.

Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: I Need A Man To Love
Source: LP:Cheap Thrills
Writer: Joplin/Andrew
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother and the Holding Company recorded their first album at the Chicago studios of Mainstream records in 1967. Mainstream, however, was a jazz label and their engineers had no idea how to make a band like Big Brother sound good. When the band signed to Columbia the following year it was decided that the best way to record the band was onstage at the Fillmore West. As a result, when Cheap Thrills was released, four of the seven tracks were live recordings, including the Janis Joplin/Peter Albin collaboration I Need A Man To Love.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: Soul Love
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1968
The B side of the first single released by the second version of the Bonniwell Music Machine was a wild R&B/punk piece called Soul Love, which features an instrumental section that seemingly goes on forever but in fact lasts barely more than a minute. Compared to the usual Bonniwell song, which generally managed to pack in as much substance in less than two and a half minutes than most modern songs have in twice that amount of time, Soul Love is practically a jam session.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1201 (starts 1/5/11)

Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Like A Rolling Stone
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Bob Dylan incurred the wrath of folk purists when he decided to use electric instruments for his 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. The opening track on the album is the six-minute Like A Rolling Stone, a song that was also selected to be the first single released from the new album. After the single was pressed, the shirts at Columbia Records decided to cancel the release due to its length. An acetate copy of the record, however, made it to a local New York club, where, by audience request, the record was played over and over until it was worn out (acetate copies not being as durable as their vinyl counterparts). When Columbia started getting calls from local radio stations demanding copies of the song the next morning they decided to release the single after all. Like A Rolling Stone ended up going all the way to the number two spot on the US charts, doing quite well in several other countries as well.

Artist: Byrds
Title: She Don't Care About Time
Source: CD: Turn! Turn! Turn! (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: Gene Clark
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1965
The Byrds scored two # 1 hits in 1965, Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!. Both songs came from outside sources (Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger), despite the fact that they Byrds had a wealth of songwriting talent of their own. Gene Clark in particular was writing quality originals such as She Don't Care About Time, which was issued as the B side to Turn! Turn! Turn! but was inexplicably left off the LP. More recently the song has been included as a bonus track on the remastered CD version of the album.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Thunk
Source: LP: Bark
Writer: Joey Covington
Label: Grunt
Year: 1971
The classic Jefferson Airplane lineup of Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casidy and Spencer Dryden made their debut on the second Airplane LP, Surrealistic Pillow, and remained intact for the next three albums. In 1970, however, the oldest band member, drummer Dryden, left the Airplane and Joey Covington was brought in as his replacement. Covington's contribution as a songwriter was the offbeat a cappela tune Thunk, a song that is up there with some of Slick's more avant garde material on the weirdness scale.

Artist: Crawling Walls
Title: Inner Limits
Source: LP: Inner Limits
Writer: Bob Fountain
Label: Voxx
Year: 1985
The Crawling Walls have the distinction of being the only band from the 1980s to get played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era (besides the various theme music used on the show). I promised to reveal the story behind that on this blog, so here it is: The Crawling Walls were one of the first neo-psychedelic bands, and to my knowledge the only one in New Mexico. Led by keyboardist/vocalist/songwriter Bob Fountain (who used a vintage Vox organ exclusively) the band also featured guitarist Larry Otis, who had previously recorded with the Philisteens, an early 80s alternative band (think R.E.M. or the Police). I had known Larry in high school in Germany (I hung out with his younger brother Jeff), and even then he had a reputation as a talented guitarist. The Crawling Walls recorded at Bottom Line Studios, a homemade studio in the basement of a rented house on San Rafael Avenue, just a few blocks south of Albuquerque International Airport and directly under the path of the backup runway. Generally this was not a problem unless the wind was coming from the south, in which case all studio activity would have to stop as a 737 or something flew over. Engineer Mark Shipman (whom I knew as a fellow volunteer at radio station KUNM) did a remarkable job on both the Philisteens and Crawling Walls albums, considering the conditions he was working under. Other artists recording at Bottom Line included guitarists Steve LaRue and Kenny Hume and experimental rocker Craig Ellis, along with a variety of bands including Civilian Joe, the Pheremones, the Soft Corps and the Mumphries. Bottom Line was dismantled in 1989 when the house was sold and the tenants (including most of the members of the Mumphries) were evicted. At that time I had only recently gained controlling interesting in Bottom Line Studios and ended up selling all the equipment to Kenny Hume and leaving Albuquerque in disgust. All of the music beds heard on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era were recorded at Bottom Line in the late 1980s.

Artist: Blues Image
Title: Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
Source: LP: Open
Writer: Allison/Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
Despite drawing crowds in south Florida and getting rave reviews from the rock press, Blues Image was never able to sell a lot of albums. This is a shame, as almost all of their material was as good or better than anything else being recorded in 1969-70. A classic example is the medley of Fugue U (emulating J.S. Bach), a jazz-rock arrangement of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and the latin-rock instrumental Wrath Of Daisey). Guitarist Mike Pinera went on to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly the following year.

Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Your Head Is Reeling
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer: Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
Ultimate Spinach was one of a group of bands signed by M-G-M in 1967 and marketed as being representative of the "Boss-town sound". Unfortunately for all involved, there really was no such thing as a "Boss-town sound" (for that matter there was no such thing as a "San Francisco sound" either, but that's another story). All the hype aside, Ultimate Spinach itself was the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Ian Bruce-Palmer, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. The opening track of side two of the band's debut album is a piece called Your Head Is Reeling, which is as good or better than any other raga styled song of the time.

Artist: Music Machine
Title: You'll Love Me Again
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1967
The day after recording this week's show I got word of the passing of Sean Bonniwell, leader of the Music Machine, on December 29th from cancer. Next week's show will feature an extended tribute to the musical genius whose influence went far beyond his commercial success. For now we have a song by the second incarnation of the Machine, recorded in 1967 and issued as a B side on Warner Brothers that year.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: I Don't Live Today
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
I remember a black light poster that choked me up the first time I saw it. It was a shot of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar with the caption I Don't Live Today. I don't believe Hendrix was being deliberately prophetic when he wrote and recorded this classic track for the Are You Experienced album, but it still spooks me a bit to hear it, even now.

Artist: Merrell And The Exiles
Title: Tomorrow's Girl
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Fapadokly)
Writer: Merrell Fankhauser
Label: Rhino (original label: Glenn)
Year: 1967
Merrell Fankhauser was a fixture on the L.A. music scene, fronting several bands throughout the 60s ranging in styles from surf to psychedelic, depending on what was in vogue at the time. For most of 1966 and 67 he led a group called Merrell and the Exiles (or Xiles), while holding down a somewhat more mundane day job between gigs. The last single by the Exiles was Tomorrow's Girl, originally released in 1967 on the tiny Glenn label and included on Fankhauser's Fapadokly album on UIP records later that same year.

Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Ball And Chain
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer: Willie Mae Thornton
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
In June of 1967 Big Brother And The Holding Company, fronted by Janis Joplin, electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival with their rendition of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain. Over the years Joplin, both with and without Big Brother continued to perform the song. One of the finest performances of Ball And Chain was recorded live at the Fillmore in 1968 and included on the band's major label debut, Cheap Thrills. In retrospect the recording marks the peak of both Big Brother and of Joplin, who went their separate ways after the album was released.

Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Your Saving Grace
Source: LP: Anthology (originally released on LP: Your Saving Grace)
Writer: Tim Davis
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
One of the most highly regarded of the Steve Miller Band's early albums was 1969's Your Saving Grace. A listen to the title track of the album shows why. As often as not, spoken sections in the middle of a song come off as silly or pretentious, but here Miller manages to make it work, enhancing what is already a fine recording.

Artist: Doors
Title: Roadhouse Blues
Source: CD: Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Morrison Hotel)
Writer: The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1970
Yet another classic rock radio standard makes its Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut this week. This difference, of course, is that classic rock radio generally uses the live version of this track from the 1970 LP Morrison Hotel.

Artist: Cream
Title: Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer: Clapton/Sharp
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
Cream was one of the first bands to break British tradition and release singles that were also available as album cuts. This tradition likely came about because 45 RPM records (both singles and extended play 45s) tended to stay in print indefinitely in the UK, unlike in the US, where a hit single usually had a shelf life of around 2-3 months then disappeared forever. When the Disraeli Gears album was released, however, the song Strange Brew, which leads off the LP, was released in Europe as a single. The B side of that single was Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which opens side two of the album.

Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Interstellar Overdrive/The Gnome
Source: CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer: Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason
Label: Capitol
Year: 1967
Syd Barrett was still very much at the helm for Pink Floyd's first LP, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, released in 1967. The group had already released a pair of Barrett-penned singles, Arnold Layne (which was banned by the BBC) and See Emily Play. Piper, though, was the first full album for the group, and some tracks, notably the nine-minute psychedelic masterpiece Interstellar Overdrive, were entirely group efforts. On the original UK version of the LP Overdrive tracks directly into a Barrett piece, the Gnome. The US version, issued on Tower records, truncated Overdrive and re-arranged the song order. The only CD version of Piper currently available, heard here, follows the original UK ordering of the tracks.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: There's A Chance We Can Make It
Source: LP: Electric Comic Book
Writer: Gilbert/Scala
Label: Mercury
Year: 1967
Following up on their biggest hit, (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet, the Blues Magoos released There's A Chance We Can Make It, backed with Pipe Dream for their next single. Unfortunately for both songs, some stations elected to play There's A Chance We Can Make It while others preferred Pipe Dream. The result was that neither song charted as high as it could have had it been released with a weaker B side. This had the ripple effect of causing Electric Comic Book (the album both songs appeared on) to not chart as well as its predecessor Psychedelic Lollipop had. This in turn caused Mercury Records to lose faith in the Blues Magoos and not give them the kind of promotion that could have kept the band in the public eye beyond its 15 minutes of fame. The ultimate result was that for many years, there were an excessive number of busboys and cab drivers claiming to have once been members of the Blues Magoos and not many ways to disprove their claims, at least until the internet made information about the group's actual membership more accessible.

Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Buffalo Springfield Again
Writer: Stephen Stills
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.

Artist: Wishbone Ash
Title: Leaf And Stream
Source: LP: Argus
Writer: Wishbone Ash
Label: Decca
Year: 1972
One of the first bands ever to feature two lead guitarists was Wishbone Ash. The story goes that following the departure of their original guitarist bassist Martin Turner and drummer Steve Upton auditioned several lead guitarists and got it down to two finalists, Andy Powell and Ted Turner (no relation to Martin), but could not decide between the two. At that point they decided just to keep both of them, and a heavy metal tradition was born. Whether the story is true or not, the two definitely traded off leads for the next three years and five albums, even on relatively quiet songs such as Leaf And Stream from their third LP, Argus.

Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Most Peculiar Man
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
You would think that a high school on a US military facility would be inclined to use the most staunchly traditional teaching methods known to mankind. Surprisingly, though, this was not the case at General H. H. Arnold High School in Weisbaden, Germany, in 1967. In fact, the English department was teaching some sort of new system that dispensed with terms such as verb and noun and replaced them with a more conceptual approach to language. What I best remember about my Freshman English class is the day that my rather Bohemian teacher (he wore sandals to class!), actually brought in a copy of the Sounds Of Silence and had us dissect two songs from the album, Richard Cory and A Most Peculiar Man. We spent several classes discussing the similarities (they both deal with a suicide by someone representing a particular archetype) and differences (the methods used and the archetypes themselves) between the songs. I have forgotten everything else about that class and its so-called revolutionary approach (and even the teacher's name), but those two songs have stayed with me my entire life. I guess that teacher was on to something.

Artist: Kinks
Title: Tired Of Waiting For You
Source: CD: Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Priority (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1965
After a series of hard-rocking hits such as You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, the Kinks surprised everyone with the highly melodic Tired Of Waiting For You in 1965. As it turns out the song was just one of many steps in the continually maturing songwriting of Ray Davies.

Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
The Leaves are a bit unusual in that the members were all native L.A.ins. Founded by bassist Jim Pons and some of his fraternity brothers at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song to record as a single by their producer (Love Minus Zero) and allowed to write their own B side. In this case that B side was Too Many People, written by Pons and guitarist Bill Rinehart. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.

Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
This song has long since been adopted by the city of Boston, yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist/drummer Dickie Dodd, incidently, was a former Mouseketeer who had played on the surf-rock hit Mr. Moto as a member of the Bel-Airs.

Artist: Monkees
Title: Daily Nightly
Source: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.)
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1967
One of the first rock songs to feature a Moog synthesizer was the Monkees' Daily Nightly from the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. Micky Dolenz, who had a reputation for nailing it on the first take but being unable to duplicate his success in subsequent attempts, was at the controls of the new technology for this recording of Michael Nesmith's most psychedelic song (he also sang lead on it). Here we have a slightly different mono mix of the tune, with the synthesizer a bit more prominent than on the stereo LP.

Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Dear Doctor
Source: LP: Beggar's Banquet
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1968
The term Anglophile is usually used to describe Americans with a fascination for all things British. Just what is the term for the opposite situation? Whatever it might be, the Stones have always been an example, from their open idolization of Chuck Berry and other Chess Records artists to songs like this one, which sounds more like Appalachian folk music than anything British.

Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square
Source: CD: Stand Up
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Another rock band influenced by folk music, Jethro Tull incorporated traditional Indian instruments on Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square, one of a pair of tunes named for future bassist Jeffery Hammond.

Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: The Little Old Lady From Pasadena
Source: LP: The Little Old Lady From Pasadena
Writer: Atfeld/Christian
Label: Liberty
Year: 1964
Just for something completely different we have this famous Jan And Dean hit from 1964. The song was inspired by a popular TV ad campaign for Southern California Dodge dealers that was a parody of the cliche about the used car that was only driven by a "little old lady from Pasadena to go to church on Sundays". Kathryn "Put a Dodge in your garage, honey" Minner, the chracter actress who had starred in the commercials, appeared with Jan And Dean on the album cover.

Artist: Who
Title: Someone's Coming
Source: CD: Magic Bus-The Who On Tour
Writer: John Entwhistle
Label: MCA
Year: 1968
Some songs just get no respect. First released in 1967 in the UK as the B side of I Can See For Miles, John Alec Entwistle's Someone's Coming got left off the US release entirely. It wasn't until the release of the Magic Bus single (and subsequent LP) in 1968 that the tune appeared on US vinyl, and then, once again as a B side. The Magic Bus album, however, was never issued on CD in the US, although it has been available as a Canadian import (heard here) for several years. Finally, in 1995 the song found a home on a US CD as a bonus track on The Who Sell Out.

Artist: Them
Title: Baby Please Don't Go
Source: LP: Backtrackin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Joe Williams
Label: London (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1965
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, the band quickly got a reputation for being rude and obnoxious, particularly to members of the English press (although it was actually a fellow Irishman who labeled them as "boorish"). Their first single was what has come to be considered the definitive version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the single was a flop in the US. Oddly enough, the song's B side ended up being the song most people associate with Them: the classic Gloria, which was released as Them's US debut single in 1965 but promptly found itself banned on most US radio stations (except in Southern Florida) due to suggestive lyrics.